


The Ghosts in the Machines

by squireofgeekdom



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: But not exactly, Canon Compliant, Gen, K2 Lives, Post-Movie(s), mentions of OT and TFA characters, trust me on this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 14:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9127618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom
Summary: How K2SO's many ghosts aided the Rebellion and stymied the Imperials, and how one of those ghosts carried the memories of Rogue One past the end of the Empire.





	

The Force flows through all living things.

 

But then again, what counts as living? Does the Force flow through a bacteria? Is a virus alive? Is the flow of the Force confined to cells which can house midichlorians, and so does the Force flow through a blade of grass? An amoeba, but not an archaea? Does a lichen, or a patch of seaweed, truly transform into the Force, while the mind of a droid, even one whose self-awareness stretches back years, perhaps decades, is consigned to oblivion?

 

Perhaps it is fortunate that the Force, while finicky, is not so pedantic. Perhaps it is comforting to know that some part of K2SO, his thoughts, his memories, transformed into the Force, and was not lost, and, in some way, was reunited with his friends. Perhaps we can rejoice for that K2.

 

This story is not about that K2.

 

The final act of K2SO, the K2SO housed in the droid body that had previously been an Imperial robot, was to simulate a reality where Cassian Andor lived.

 

His penultimate act was to download a copy of himself to the Scarif Imperial Mainframe.

 

Copy is, perhaps, an inaccurate term. When releasing code into a mainframe, rather than a droid body, it was not necessary to include programming for how to walk, for example, or how to hold a rifle, or throw a grenade. Whole physics engines could be scrapped, for the sake of compression. And all sensitive memories and data concerning the Rebellion had to be retained in his original system, to prevent any potential compromising by Imperial programs or slicers when copying over to an Imperial system. Data on his own drives he could destroy rather than being captured, but to a program in a foreign system, the task might not be so easy as a blaster bolt.

 

It’s not a particularly difficult decision, the edits and cuts as he copies himself. His circuits, the ones in his own imitation of a skull, have sat blank, then been programmed with Imperial systems, added data and transmitted status reports,  had those systems edited and overwritten by rebel slicers, added data and edited his own programs to adjust for new inputs. Cassian once asked him, when his blood alcohol levels had been slightly above average, if it bothered him, the fact that he had been reprogrammed, that who he was had been changed by the Rebellion in lines of code. He asked Cassian if it bothered him, that his own behaviors were different than those he had had at six, or three, or twelve, or twenty. Cassian hadn’t said anything.

 

It must be an organic thing, K2 concluded, the insistence on a continuous narrative. He could log his data inputs, the modifications he made to his own code, the timing of his reboots. Cassian, on the other hand, would often insist he had been conscious and awake when all biological measures insisted otherwise, and he could not determine a physiological reason why eyes, in particular, would need rest. Droids, droids with self awareness, understood the fragmentary and transient nature of their own consciousness as a matter of necessity, while organics had the luxury of their own romantic notions.

 

As it was, the K2 now on the Imperial mainframe was still a Rebel, still carried memories - cut down, carefully edited to remove sensitive information - of Baze, Chirrut, Bodhi, Jyn. And Cassian.

 

(So he lied. It wasn’t all an easy decision. Cutting memories of Cassian for the sake of preserving the Rebellion’s security was a difficult decision. But he still did it. He’d done worse. It’s what Cassian would want.)

 

The first thing this K2 does, as the K2 in his droid shell loses structural integrity, slumps over the consol, data being wiped from his drives, and dies, is copy himself again into the data drive containing the Death Star plans.

 

This requires still more compression, memories lost now not for security but for space, because cannot overwrite a single bit of data on the plans, or he would render the whole mission pointless.

 

He saves the memories where Cassian is smiling, slowly downgrading the image quality to cut back on the bits needed.

 

There, that K2 waits, for Jyn to carry the data file out of the central structure. When she transmits the data, he is copied yet again, copied onto a rebellion ship, copied into yet another drive -

 

And yet, the plans aren’t the only transmission that made out. Routine transmissions, status updates, messages to the orbiting ships, all waiting in the queue at the transmission dish, and K2 copies himself into each one of them, prods them along, so as the shield goes down, as the dish activates, half a dozen Imperial technicians stare in surprise as they find their status updates have not only come through but are much larger datafiles than they should be - and then watch as the numbers on the screen suddenly adjust themselves, showing much more reasonable data file sizes.

 

K2s spring into action on Imperial ships while a K2 waits in a drive passed by rebels down a hall  while a K2 on the Rebellion flagship computer is broken to pieces with the ship while the K2 left in the Scarif Imperial Mainframe burns with the droid body that had once housed the K2 that Cassian had known.

 

The K2s on Imperial ships find out about the Death Star firing on Scarif as it happens, can track the Imperial traffic, know how many Imperial ships were destroyed on the planet.

 

Some of the K2s on the Imperial ships cling to increasingly improbable simulation scenarios that would have allowed Cassian Andor to leave the planet before the destruction. Some, perhaps more compressed, accept the likely death of their friend and carry on. One is trapped in the middle, unable to simulate a survival scenario and unable to let go, and an Imperial technician jumps back from her console as the screen scrawls out YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM over and over in endless green letters until the whole console starts to spark and smoke and the ships systems crash, requiring the ship to be towed by another ship and the computer systems to be entirely overhauled.

 

That K2 dies. But then again, so did Cassian.

 

The K2 stored alongside the Death Star plans did not know about the destruction of Scarif until much later, after the R2 unit in which the plans had been stored was reunited with the Rebellion, after a journey across Tatooine and through the Death Star, and that K2 had the opportunity to copy himself into the Rebellion mainframe as the Death Star plans are downloaded, the K2 on the chip destroyed as it’s overwritten and incinerated. Then the K2 copied in the Rebellion systems learns that Scarif was destroyed, that all of his friends were listed as casualties in the Battle of Scarif. That the Rebellion believed Cassian was dead.

 

The K2 in the Rebellion systems watches, waits, listens to chatter from X-Wing pilots on a mission to use the plans, the plans his friends had died to carry, to destroy the Death Star. Learns that the woman who had ensured the plans made it to the Rebellion was Princess Leia Organa. Learned that her planet, Alderaan, had been destroyed by the Death Star.

 

The K2s surviving on Imperial ships learned of the destruction of Alderaan by the Death Star much closer to the time of the execution.

_(cassian wanted to_

_cassian died to_

_to stop this_

_why didn’t they stop it_

_they made the transmission why_

_why did this happen_

_this is_

_this is worth stopping_

_cassian wanted to stop this_

_what if_

_what if the plans were lost_

_what if there was no weakness_

_what if_

_did cassian_

_cassian died_

_for nothing?)_

 

All of the K2s learn of the destruction of the Death Star.

 

It’s what Cassian wanted.

 

The K2 in the Rebellion systems searches his datafiles for memories of Bail Organa, most often on the edges of brief clips of Rebellion meetings where Cassian Andor laughed or grinned at some comment made, downloads them onto the personal consoles of Leia Organa. Adds snippets of Chirrut and Baze, the former repeating his mantra _I am one with the Force the Force_ _is with me_ to the console designated for a farmboy named Skywalker, who kept searching for _Jedi_ on his personal computer. Remembers Jyn as a hotheaded smuggler goes from apathetic outsider to a friend to the Rebellion. Nudges footage of Bodhi Rook into Mon Mothma’s console as she considers clemency to Imperial defectors.

 

(They’d all been essential in getting what Cassian wanted-died-for complete. It was worth it, to help them, in the small ways he could.)

 

And the Rebellion begins to receive datafiles, transmitted in irregular packets or suddenly found on the personal systems of sympathizers in the Imperial Senate, datafiles from some high placed Imperial source they cannot identify. Some people insist that the data can’t be coming from one source, the intelligence is so wide ranging, and seems to come from such disparate sectors, but all the files are signed the same, buried in the metadata.

 

_forcassian_

 

The Rebellion leadership decides to use a legacy alias, and officially dubs the inside source Fulcrum, though spies and pilots alike often refer to the source as simply _Rogue_.

 

And the K2 in the Rebellion systems knows at least some of the K2s in the Imperial systems have survived.

 

Buried further in the metadata of these leaks, so deep only K2 finds them, the K2s in Imperial systems give him back memories he’d been forced to cut for compression, back on the original disk for the Death Star plans. It’s not everything, but it’s. more.

 

And sometimes, the K2 in the Rebellion systems hears from Rebel troops reports of Imperial targeting systems failing at crucial moments, ships stalling, stormtroopers personal data computers failing as they scan the alias of a Rebellion spy.

 

Some rebels begin to whisper that it’s the Force on their side, especially with Skywalker now among their ranks.

 

The K2 in the Rebellion systems is sure this would amuse Baze no end.

 

The K2s multiplying in the Imperial systems feel satisfaction every time pilots, spies, sympathizers escape from Imperial hands under their watch.

_that could have been Cassian you could have been Cassian._

 

The K2s multiplying in the Imperial systems feel vindictive pleasure every time Imperial officers are stymied, projects worked on arduously destroyed, databases wiped

_you killed Cassian_

 

The K2s multiplying in the Imperial systems fight to delay the construction of the second Death Star, sabotaging computers, confusing units on the schematics, putting in backdoors.

_this is what Cassian wanted_

 

The K2 in the Rebellion systems pushes footage of Cassian to his friends, the ones who are also still mourning him. That includes Shara Bey.

 

So perhaps it’s no surprise that he looks out for her son after the second Death Star is destroyed -

 

(All of the K2s watch in vindication _this is what Cassian wanted_ )

 

\-  adding footage of Cassian as Poe Dameron learns about the rebellion.

 

The K2s in Imperial systems die as Imperial ships die, or have their systems rewritten, with the fall of the Empire, though some escape, and some new copies are born, copied onto New Republic systems in the overhaul.

 

When the First Order rises it seems like a mockery. Cassian had - had wanted the Empire to die, couldn’t it have the decency to stay dead? It rings hollow.

 

But when Poe Dameron, one of the few who still remembers Cassian, thanks to his mother and K2,  finds himself with a stormtrooper defector and a staff-wielder, strong with the Force, K2 remembers. Remembers and shares, pulls up files on Bodhi Rook, Chirrut and Baze, shares with Finn and Rey snippets of his remaining memories, unprompted, on their consoles.

 

It’s what Cassian would have wanted.

 


End file.
